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I keep coming back to a simplified infantry brigade meant for reservists and for small countries*. I'm convinced that such a force could be designed to be both valuable and low cost, so in essence extremely good value for money. The affordability would enable to have many such brigades in the alliance, taking away potential aggressors' hopes that we have the weak spot of lacking mass.
These features are essential:
- effective anti-tank capability
- effective support fires capability (against soft targets)
- effective and reliable communications
- electronic warfare for detection and selective jamming
- effective battlefield air defence (excluding anti-manned platform air defence)
- effective night vision (including thermals)
- low cost of equipment
- standardisation of equipment
- low training requirements for equipment use
- modest tactics repertoire
- use of many reservists**
- portable equipment consistent with employment by reservists
- battlefield taxi capability
- suitable weather protection
- sufficient supply
Personnel
I'm thinking of a scheme in which volunteers get hired for six months of training (four months basic infantryman training, then two months of specialisation training at individual & small unit level).
Promising candidates*** would be asked to extend for a year to become NCOs; six months NCO course plus another six months employed as NCO in a small unit leader and trainer job.
Promising candidates among the NCOs would then be asked to extend for another year to become senior NCOs or junior officers; again a six months course followed by employment in their new rank in another training rotation of six months. Those who fail in a course (should be about 20...40% would drop out of the service immediately (though if the reason was medical they could stay in service and repeat the course).
This way the militia or army could create trained enlisted men, junior and senior NCOs and junior officers (basically the ranks up to lieutenant) for the reserves without any conscription. Further volunteer training could lead to company leaders, battalion commanders and even regimental or brigade commanders. There are hardly any officers necessary above the brigade command rank (colonel), for almost all 'higher' officer positions are de facto management positions for which many experienced civilian managers with basic six months volunteer background would be more qualified.
Organisation
The organisation would be optimised for forces of the line purposes. Rapid movements against armed resistance would not be required, largely eliminating the need for armour units. Attacks over large open fields would only be done with appropriate higher echelon support.
- brigade HQ
- 2-4 infantry battalions
- combat support battalion
- sustainment battalion
The commanding officer would be a colonel (brigade) and the chief of staff a major. The other HQ members don't need to be officers. (These reservists would draw most of their skills, work ethic and character development from civilian life. Imagine a senior NCO in brigade staff as being a middle management guy in a huge corporation, for example!)
A signaller small unit and a MP (also guards) small unit are attached. The command post would be hidden in a building or in coniferous woodland, with radio antennas set up more than one km away from it.
The infantry battalions would have
- a HQ platoon (all personnel & material administration in this staff)
- nine infantry platoons
- a forward observation & sniping platoon (in this order!)
- a drone platoon (observation, attack and intercept drones, ~ 5km radius)
- a (large) battle taxi and company supply platoon
- a signals & electronic warfare platoon
- four company command teams (captain as CO and senior NCO as company sergeant major)
The combat support battalion would feature
- howitzer fires (mostly HE and IR smoke)
- (10...20 km) observation capabilities
- (10...20 km) attack aerial drones
- (very) low level air threat detection & defence
- carrier drones with embedded radio repeater feature
- minesweeping
- major demolitions works (wall breaching is for infantry)
- passive electronic warfare
- military intelligence teams
- area or aimed RF jamming
The sustainment battalion would
- receive & store supplies (mostly fuel and munitions)
- provide packaged potable water
- repair roads
- create ditch crossings
- do vehicle recovery&repair
- large-scale electrical power supply
- store&distribute batteries
- provide a secured and low observability intranet (especially chat, chat group, photo exchange, voice recording and voice call communication in the formation and via VPN with whitelisted family/partner at home) as safer mobile phone service replacement.
Equipment
Motor vehicles would play a relatively minor role, for the brigade would not manoeuvre very much. It would do road marches, move some bulk supplies around at night and it would need a battle taxi service. The road march capability could most cheaply be realised by using commandeered and quickly repainted civilian 4x4 cars and trucks. The battletaxi approach could be realised quite cheaply with
- a very low silhouette optionally manned vehicle with thin all-round (not roof) fragmentation protection armour**** and bomblet dud mine protection armour, capacity one wounded man on stretcher or equivalent volume 150 kg cargo, hemisperical coverage smoke system AND
- a cargo multicopter drone with good enough inertial navigation and EMP hardening to counter all soft kill threats, for the same cargo (CASEVAC only as last resort)
I stick to previous year's list regarding weapons, but with exceptions; a high speed propeller-driven 'interceptor' drone and a fibreoptic guidance FPV attack quadcopter appears to be effective, reliable and much cheaper.***** I'm also unsure about the artillery; that blog post was about a stand-alone force design, while a 'keep it simple' reserve brigade of the line could limit itself to a light howitzer and rely on higher echelon support for deeper fires.
The exact weapons and munitions choices don't matter as much as keeping them cheap, easy to master and not too burdensome on the procurement bureaucracy.
Stocks of equipment, spares and munition
The
proper storage of the equipment (not just ready for war, but also for
exercises) with basic amount of supplies (fuels, winter-compatible
coolants&lubricants, spare parts, three days worth of munitions at
the brigade depot) is of particular interest. The brigade
would have to use a car & truck park that's shared between brigades for any exercises. The reserve brigades need to have simultaneous refresher trainings once in a while to prevent that the army cheats by moving equipment around for exercises instead of maintaining sufficient equipment levels. This means the training areas would be insufficient and some refresher trainings would have to happen outside of training areas.
Sensors
A rather static front-line is effective only against armed fores that are far below state of the art, such as the Russian Army. It provides security for objects and troops in the rear area and restricts the tactical repertoire of the enemy. Scouting on the ground is very much restricted.
The 'modern' (That's not the same as state of the art!) front-line as observed in Ukraine is a defence in depth. It begins with a repulsion and suppression effort; guided missiles such as GUMLRS are used to attack troops concentrations, high value targets and munition dumps at almost 100 km depth, informed by satellite reconnaissance and agents. High value target need to hide or move frequently, big munition dumps get established farther away and smaller ones are still close to the front but often hidden.
More battlefield interdiction begins about 20 km deep in hostile territory. Kamikaze drones engage troops and vehicles on sight, making movements hazardous especially in daylight when cheap visible spectrum camera-equipped drones can be used. This battlefield interdiction would be limited to about 10 km if no repeater drones and no carrier drones can be employed.
Detected high value targets and troops get shot at with artillery. The howitzer fires into marshalling areas were said to have caused more losses to Red Army troops in WW2 than the actual assaults. Furthermore, it was also said that most infantry assaults that failed actually broke down more than 400 m away from the defenders' positions. These WW2 veteran remarks cannot be fact-checked any more, but their emphasis that defenders should generously apply indirect fires already before the actual assault was likely well-justified.
The sensors that enable such fires to be effective are thus of great importance for the defensibility of a front-line. This is thus equipment that's almost certainly well worth its price.
- (tethered) observation drones for 2-10 km spotting distance
- mast-mounted battlefield radars with ability to detect vehicle movements and ID between tracked and wheeled
- portable and mast-mounted thermal and E/O camera sets for observation (including flash spotting) with very accurate direction measurement
- portable and mast-mounted radar for C-UAS detection, mortar locating and ground movement detection (& classification) out to 20 km
- passive EW for location-finding and listening (backed up by decryption)
- ability to timely download and process data from higher echelon sensors (mostly aircraft and satellites)
- microphone networks for non-line of sight detection of land vehicles and helicopters
- analysis of POW belongings (especially smartphones, radios, maps) with tools for military intelligence
There's often a wide (a km or two rather than a few hundred metres as in WWI) dead man's land (unoccupied area) between the opposing forces. This requires surveillance, including by observer-sniper teams. Sometimes UGVs are used to deploy surface-laid anti-tank mines in this no man's land.
The first actual defences are often entrenched platoon-sized pickets among anti-tank minefields. I strongly suspect that the relatively low casualty counts (relative to munitions expended compared to lethality during WW2) are mostly about the rarity of immediate unit-level counterattacks and about a very low force density (far from well-manned uninterrupted trench lines).
Tactics repertoire
The brigade would be designed for flat or hilly terrain with woodland, settlements and agricultural areas (pastures and corn fields, with light fences and drainage ditches).
Concealment and minimised long-carrying RF emissions should be prioritised over camouflage and deception.
Field fortifications would have to be created quickly and be designed against near (20 m) hits by 152 mm HE with PD fuse. NATO/EU would not conduct much trench war, but some countries might reasonably believe that more intense preparations for using field fortifications make sense (examples South Korea, Greece). The effective concealment of such field fortification is more important than the difference between being able to withstand a direct or an indirect 152 mm HE hit.
The brigade would be capable of attacks with limited objectives. Very small such attacks (platoons raiding 2 km deep for taking prisoners) would be within its own means against entrenched opposition, while larger attacks with limited objectives against effective defences (pushing the frontline forward) would require higher echelon support.
The brigade would have to master delaying actions and elements of elastic defence as well as river line and ridgeline****** defence tactics. The weak motorisation would make delaying actions very difficult (low force density) in open terrain, though.
The attack tactics for open terrain are a problem. IFVs and APCs would be expensive and of questionable survivability. Massive employment of IR smoke and suppressive HE fires would require much outside fire support. It may sound ridiculous, but infiltration tunnels might become a thing in infantry warfare again. AFAIK nobody outside of Vietnam and Gaza used tunnels offensively recently.
I opted for a forces of the line design rather than a forces of exploitation design because the latter is much more demanding; so demanding that I somewhat doubt that a single army is truly competent and well-equipped for having forces of exploitation.
To call such a brigade an "infantry brigade" is traditional, but badly misleading. The sensors and indirect fires capabilities are too important. Infantry would be less than 50% of the personnel, for sure. I propose a different name, one that's also helpful for recruiting and for political reasons: "Defender brigade".
Last but not least: please don't misunderstand this as just another fancy forces idea; it's meant to convey several thoughts about setting priorities very differently compared to what the army establishments prefer!
related:
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-budget-brigade-for-2020.html
S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
*: Small countries often fall for the miniature military syndrome, trying to have a sophisticated (mechanised brigade, some paratroopers) standing army, an own separate air force with supersonic combat aircraft and an own navy with frigates and submarines if there's at least a tiny strip of coastal real estate in the country. This is inefficient bollocks.
**: extremely important to keep personnel costs down - reservists proved to be competent in war again and again
***: judged
by observation, good health and IQ>100 as well as no intention to
pursue a career in jobs that would be exempt from wartime mobilisation
****: The Ukrainians use dune buggys that are so low silhouette that they're nearly invisible to ground threats when driving on roads. The only onboard protection against flying drones would be multispectral smoke throwers to buy time or to break a lock-on. Frag protection equivalent to no more than 2 mm RHAeq.
*****: than LMM&RALAS / Though quadcopters are much slower than the (already untypically slow) LMM rocket. This means less defences against low-flying combat aircraft, but NATO troops would hardly ever see those anyway. Moreover, the other list has RCWS with C-UAS capability; this brigade design has hardly any vehicles, so those RCWS would have to be based on some of the low silhouette vehicles and would serve as semi-stationary very short range C-UAS.
******: Keeping the advantage of using radios and sensors from high vantage points, but keeping most defenders behind the ridgeline unless the forward slope offers much concealment.
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